Intermission
by Decotex
Summary: In between his big save-the-world adventures, the Doctor gets bored. OC/11 Fluff
1. Chapter 1

The Doctor parked the TARDIS a safe distance between the Andromeda and Umbra galaxies, sat down, and spun in his chair. He looked around the silent room blankly. Once again, he found himself alone.

It's the curse of the time lords. Your friends will grow up, move on, and eventually die, but you? You'll be right back where you started.

He planted his right foot down on the floor and pushed, spinning the chair again. He started off slowly, but sped up until he could no longer differentiate between the lights on the walls and the wall itself; it was all a spinning blur of flashes, lights, buttons, levers, and loneliness.

It wasn't in his nature to be mopey, though. The Doctor stopped the chair, stood up, and immediately fell over. He jumped up and bounded down the stairs.

"Well then," he said out loud. He liked talking to the TARDIS, even though she couldn't respond. Another lost friend, but there was no time for that. He walked in a circle around the center of the TARDIS.  
"Where to next? Next, next, next … I have all of time and space at my fingertips. The world is my oyster. Life is a box of chocolates. Plenty of fish in the sea. Stop to smell the roses. Never swim right after eating … What?"

He dashed up the stairs and vaulted himself over the railing. He pushed random buttons on the control panel without looking, and then pulled the nearest lever.

"To infinity … and beyond!" he shouted as the TARDIS shook. "Oh, that was bad. That's not my catch phrase. I need a catch phrase. Why don't I have a catch phrase? I need-"

The TARDIS stopped suddenly, and he was thrown against the railing. The Doctor got up, straightened his bow tie, and strode out the door.

He was on earth. The weather was cloudy, and he thought for a moment he had landed in England in the 21st century. There was something vaguely different about the place, though. He looked around - and noticed the girl. Her hair wasn't unlike that of Amy Pond, and she was staring open mouthed at the box that fell out of the sky and the man that walked out of it.

She screamed.


	2. Chapter 2

The Doctor released the control lever on the mainframe of the TARDIS and stepped back to look at the dashboard, making sure he hadn't broken anything. He then checked himself, patting his legs and arms, to make sure he hadn't broken anything on his own body. When he was satisfied that both he and the TARDIS were more or less in working condition, he sat down in his padded chair and lifted his feet onto the railing.

"Have you dried off yet?" he asked, craning his neck to look over at the girl behind him. She was standing in a puddle of water, rubbing her clothes furiously with a towel. Her soggy brown lace-up boots laid a few feet away.

"No, not really. Do you really not have an outlet in here? Not a single hairdryer? Or like, one of those hand heat dryer things they have in airports? A comb, even?" She pulled at her thick auburn hair, which hung in wet clumps.

"I'm afraid not. I've never needed any of those things. My hair is just naturally like this." The Doctor grinned, giving the top of his head a satisfied pat. He noticed Anna glaring at him and dropped the smile quickly.

"Dreadfully sorry about …" he waved his arms wildly at the watery spots on the floor, Anna's wet clothes, and the fish dying on the ground. " … all of this. It's not usually like this. It's usually pretty peaceful and calm. Well, at least it's usually more peaceful and calm than this … Actually it's never even remotely peaceful nor calm in the slightest, but it's usually significantly less wet." He watched her throw the towel across the railing, sit down, and struggle to take her socks off.

"I have some clothes, if you want, somewhere …" he trailed off.

"Thanks, but I don't think any of your clothes would fit me. You're much bigger than me … And also smaller in some areas." Anna curled her left sock up into a ball and tried to ring the water out of it.

"No, I have clothes with-clothes that would fit you there-clothes for girls, that is. Girls your age." Anna looked over at him.

"Why the hell would you have teenage girl's clothes? That's a little bit creepy, don't you think?"

"Well, you never know. I could regenerate as a girl. A teenage one even. Maybe, if I'm lucky, I'll be ginger as well. Not unlike you, in fact. It would be quite nice to be you for a while, actually. I would-yes, I guess this is a tad creepy, you're right. I'll go get you those clothes now." The Doctor leaped off of his chair, forgetting the slippery floor, and slid a foot before grabbing the rail to steady himself. Looking over at Anna to see if she noticed (she hadn't), he continued down the stairs and in the direction of where he hoped to find his closet.

"Hurry back, I'm going to end up like one of them," she yelled after him, pointing at the fish on the ground. Anna continued ringing out her clothes. She feigned annoyance, but in reality she was exhilarated. Not to sound cliché, she thought, but I've never felt so alive. The worst parts about life, she reflected, are the boundaries. The sky's the limit, they say, but what's beyond the sky? What about the stars? They say you can be whoever and whatever you want, but what they mean is that you can be a janitor or a teacher or an astronaut or a lawyer. Can I be a magician? Or a carpet salesman in ancient Rome? No, they chuckle. That's silly. That's childish. That's impossible. They say this as if it's a universally-held belief that needs no questioning, when in reality those are the beliefs that need questioning most of all. They, Anna decided, are not very smart.

"Heads up," the Doctor said as he returned. He threw a ball of what he hoped were teenage ginger girl clothes over the raised platform at Anna. She caught them and motioned for him to turn around.

The Doctor turned and stared up at the lights on the ceiling of the TARDIS.  
"Heads up," he said again, reflectively. "Heads up? What does that even mean? It's short for 'Turn your head up', right? But then, why would it be plural? Why not 'head up?' if there's only one person, and 'heads up' if there are multiple people?"

Anna tossed her old clothes on top of her boots and checked herself in one of the reflective panels on the wall of the TARDIS. Her long hair was still wet, but there wasn't much she could do about that. She wore faded denim shorts and a baggy bright teal sweater. They were from the wrong decade, but Anna was just glad he had gotten close to her century. She turned to look at the him.

"Alright Doctor, where to now?" she asked. The Doctor spun on his heel to look at her.

"You look nice. Straight out of the eighties. Or was it the seventies? Anyway, next trip's on you," he said, walking down the steps. "I picked the last one and, again, really sorry about the whole water thing." He ran over to her and grabbed her by the shoulders. "So go ahead, anywhere in the whole wide universe."

He let go with one hand, took his sonic screwdriver out of his pocket, and pointed it straight up while pressing a button on the side. The ceiling of the TARDIS lit up with a map of billion stars. Galaxies pulsed softly in the background. The Doctor waved his sonic screwdriver and the center of the map shifted to match the point, revealing more and more space.  
"All of space and time at your fingertips. Anywhere, anywhere that you've ever imagined and an infinite number of places you haven't. Just point and we're there."  
"So where to?" he said, letting go of Anna's shoulder and walking up the stairs, leaving the image scrolling slowly down the ceiling.  
"Alpha Centuri? Andromeda? The Cartan Moons?" he pointed out each location as he spoke their names.  
"Or you're a history lover, maybe. Want to see the pyramids of Egypt being built? I know Cleopatra, rather crazy lady … The Dinosaurs? World War I?"  
Anna stared up at the stars, lost.  
"You know," she said finally. "So many places to travel to, but … I wonder, could I get a pair of shoes first?" The Doctor looked down at her bare feet, then at the soggy boots in the corner.  
"All of time and space isn't going anywhere, and I'd really rather visit them with shoes on." The Doctor shrugged.  
"Your wish," he said, typing the numbers '1980' into the TARDIS dashboard, "is my command."


End file.
